The Forbidden Professor

Chapter 4

The second lecture was on a Friday.

Three days after the first one, which had not been enough time to try and stop thinking about him. And had also somehow been more than enough time to become acutely aware of exactly how much I had been thinking about him.

I got there early.

Ten minutes. Which was normal. Organized. Punctual. Not anything else.

I took my seat in the front row, opened my notebook, wrote the date at the top of the page, and sat with my pen against the paper and waited.

Someone dropped into the seat beside me.

I glanced over. He had shaggy, brown hair and deep, brown eyes.

He was already smiling. Not the cautious kind that people offered when they weren't sure, but a full easy one, like he'd already decided how this was going to go and looked forward to it.

I recognized him.

He'd been sitting directly behind me on Tuesday and now he’d moved himself to the front row.

Beside me.

"Hey." He settled back into the chair. "You were here last lecture."

"So were you," I said. "But you were behind me."

He grinned, caught, completely unbothered by it. "Better view right here."

He held out his hand. "Nolan.”

I shook it. "Sienna."

He grinned as if he’d already known and then took a long sip of his coffee.

"Ready for round two?" he said, nodding at the board.

"I think so."

"Brave." He nodded approvingly. "I respect it."

I opened my mouth to respond —

And then the room changed.

That drop. That specific and total shift in the air that had nothing to do with noise and everything to do with one person walking in. I felt it move through the room and I felt it move through me and I looked up before I'd decided to.

He’d made his way to the front in that slow, unhurried way he always moved.

Briefcase on the desk. One cuff rolled, then the other…slow, deliberate, like the room and everything in it could wait, and it did, because it always would.

He didn't look at us while he did it and the hall sat completely still.

Then he looked up.

His gaze moved across the hall — back rows, middle rows, front — and when he reached me he stopped.

Not for long.

But long enough that something shifted in my stomach, something without a name that I wasn’t going to go looking for. And then his gaze moved on. He turned to the board and began writing.

I was staring at my notebook with my pen pressed against the page doing absolutely nothing.

Beside me Nolan said something.

I didn’t hear it.

~0~

He lectured the way he had the first time...without pausing, without softening anything for the room. The architecture of constitutional interpretation. Originalism. Living constitutionalism.

The question of whether a document written by men in the eighteenth century should breathe and flex with the world it now governed or hold the fixed shape of its original intent.

He called on people throughout.

Middle rows.

Someone near the back.

A girl two seats to my left who gave an answer that was almost right.

Not me.

I sat in the front row directly in his sightline and he taught the entire lecture as though I weren’t there. No questions directed my way. No acknowledgment.

Except that at the forty-minute mark, when he said something that made the whole room go still

“The interesting question is never which interpretation is correct. The interesting question is who benefits from the answer.”

I wrote it down and then looked back up.

His gaze was on me.

Not on the room.

But on me.

Then he returned to what he was saying and I looked back down at my notebook, my pen no longer moving.

I made myself start writing again.

~0~

The room emptied quickly after.

Nolan stood and stretched with a groan. "Glad we survived that," he said, and laughed, warm and easy.

I smiled in return.

"Dining hall?" He swung his bag onto his shoulder. "I've been told Fridays are worth it. I'm choosing to believe that."

I hesitated.

"I have something I need to do," I said.

"All right," He was already moving toward the aisle. "Same spot next week." He pointed at our two seats.

"Same spot," I smiled.

He grinned and left, and I sat for a moment in the emptying hall and looked at my notes.

Then I picked up my bag.

~0~

Office hours. Fridays. 3-5 pm. Whitmore Hall, room 214.

I arrived at Whitmore Hall at 3:15 pm.

Not right at 3 pm.

3:15…which was reasonable, which was normal, which was what any student would do.

The corridor was narrow and quiet the way administrative buildings went quiet on Friday afternoons. I stood outside room 214 for a moment that seemed to stretch longer than it had any reason to.

The door was closed.

I knocked.

"Come in."

I took a breath and opened the door, stepping in.

The office was not large.

Bookshelves on two walls, floor to ceiling, filled by someone who read the books rather than arranged them. A desk taking up most of the space. One window behind him with the late afternoon light coming in.

He was leaned back in his chair, one arm along the desk, sleeves rolled. The afternoon light behind him catching the line of his jaw, the way the fabric of his shirt pulled slightly across the broad expanse of his shoulders.

I met his eyes.

I let the door fall shut. Stood in front of his desk and tried to ignore the way my nerves were trying to overwhelm me.

He waited for me to speak.

"I had a question," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "About today's lecture."

He waited.

I asked it...a real question, something that had genuinely come up during the originalism discussion, something I'd been turning over since he'd said it.

And I was grateful to have it, genuinely grateful, because I needed it to be real.

Needed to be standing in this office for a reason I could say out loud.

He listened the way he did everything. Still. Completely present. The quality of his attention making you aware of every single word as you were choosing it..

When I finished he looked at me for a long moment.

"The answer is in your question," he said, his tone low.

I held his gaze.

Tried not to let my face flush from embarrassment.

I nodded. “Oh okay. Great,” I said, trying not to make this even worse.

His dark eyes stayed on me.

The room was silent for a moment. Then he spoke.

"The question you actually want to ask," he said, "is more interesting than what you just said."

I blinked in surprise. His eyes stayed on mine.

I stood there for one second longer than I should have. Then I turned and walked to the door.

“Don’t come back unless you’re going to ask it.” His voice came.

I froze. My hand on the handle of the door.

Then I pulled it open and left without looking back.

~0~

Lia was upside down on her bed when I got back. Legs straight up the wall, head hanging off the edge, eating crackers and reading something on her phone.

She looked at me.

"You have a face," she said.

I raised an eyebrow. "I always have a face."

"A specific face." She bit into a cracker. "Where've you been?"

I shrugged. "Library," I said, knowing that answer was safer than the alternative.

She held the cracker box out toward me upside down. Then realized all the crackers were done and that it was now just an empty cardboard.

I shook my head, then moved to sit on my bed.

I laid back and stared at the ceiling.

The question you actually want to ask is more interesting than what you just said…

I turned it over and over in the silence wondering what he’d meant by that.

I ended up staring at the ceiling until I eventually fell asleep.